The Risk
by Rach L
Summary: Logan gets a haircut.


A response to 5 Min. Story Challenge by Anna, in which you have to include three words in the first paragraph; fire, certainty, and clock. Can't resist a good, fun, short challenge. ;)  
  
----  
The Risk  
By Rach L.  
rach_jiwon@hotmail.com  
  
Rate: PG  
Season/Spoiler: Season two, "Designate This"  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Summary: Logan gets a haircut.  
Note: It's potentially risky to write about a character that we don't know much about, but I took an exception with Asha's character. This is how I pictured her at the moment, not necessarily my prediction of how the show will portray her in the future.   
  
  
***  
  
Certainty--she gambled on it, everyday, every moment, every second. Playing with fire will only get you burned, her mama had told her once. Risk nothing, you lose nothing. Play safe. Don't do anything that will get you hurt. It was a good thing that Asha hadn't listened. Risking nothing, her mother had let the precious clock called life tick away; she had frozen to death on a particularly cold day on the street of Seattle.   
  
She would not take the same step. If you risk nothing, you gain nothing. If you risk everything, though, there is a chance you might gain everything. That was how she played the game. It had worked so far.  
  
He opened the door a few moments after she'd knocked. He looked worse. If possible, she'd have thought his stubble grew an inch overnight. She put her hands in her jacket pocket and let herself in his apartment before he had a chance to say anything. "You look like hell," she brushed by his side without looking at him.   
  
When she whirled around to face him after casually looking around his penthouse that she already knew pretty well, he was still at the entrance, his hand tightly on the doorknob. She barely caught a weary, self-deprecating grin playing across his lips before he turned to her. He had been expecting someone else, that much was obvious. Who he had been expecting was also pretty obvious, too. Logan Cale she knew took everything seriously; his people, his mission, and love.  
  
"What is it?" he asked, walking straight into his office.  
  
"The box. Came to pick it up."  
  
"Right. Go ahead." He assumed his position before the computer, not sparing her a second look. Not that she had expected anything else anyway.   
  
She shrugged, went into his stack room, and grabbed what she was hers. When she returned with a box full of guns, he was still sitting on the same place, his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes fixated on the screen. She knew Logan's famous loyalty for Eyes Only wasn't the only reason he was intensely focused on his work. He needed distraction.  
  
Maybe she could provide him with one.  
  
She put down the box on his computer desk, leaning against it. "What are you working on?" she asked. "Anything we could help you with?"  
  
"Not this time," his answer was terse, his eyes still not leaving the screen. It took whole three minutes of staring on her part, but she finally succeeded in making him face her. He turned, his eyes asking a question.  
  
"Nothing," she said. "Just curious. No harm, no foul. I'll be out of your hair in a second." She took three steps to the door before she turned around again. "Hey, speaking of hair."  
  
"What about it?" His expression had 'Go away' written all over it. Suddenly, she wanted to bother him even more.   
  
"Ugly," she said.  
  
"What is?"  
  
"Your hair."  
  
She had almost expected him to reply along the line of 'It's none of your business', but he didn't. If nothing, he was always cordial to her like a good, respecting colleague, a business partner. That was what they were, after all.  
  
"You need to get a haircut," she continued when he said nothing. "And I'm volunteering."  
  
He stared back for a moment before asking, "Why?"  
  
Good question. She shrugged. "I'm good with it. Half of the guys in the team get their haircuts from me. Besides, you look terrible. People worry, Logan."   
  
She conveniently left out the part that 'she' also seemed to worry mighty a lot about him last night, her lovely dark eyes on his unkempt hair and long stubble, her exotic oval face aching with hurt only because she had seen the exhaustion apparent in his every feature. Logan knew it too.  
  
It was a few months ago when Asha had realized that Logan Cale no longer seemed to care about his body. He was never much into his own well-being, but not to that degree. He didn't eat, drink, or smile. If it was possible, she would have said that he was forced into breathing to keep on living. Now in retrospect, she was pretty sure that he had never gotten a haircut from the day he believed that he had seen the girl, Max, die.  
  
'She' came back, though, alive and well. But not without complications.  
  
"Come on, Logan," Asha urged. "Do it for our sake." For 'her' sake, she didn't add. "It's really hurting my eyes. I promise I'll not cut off any of your organs. Well, not the important ones."  
  
He smiled at that, just a tiniest bit. But it was a smile, nonetheless. He contemplated it for a few more seconds before nodding in agreement. "All right. I think it's time I could use a...haircut."  
  
"Great!" An unreasonable frivolity swept through her mind as she bounced up, her head already planning a way to do this. For the first time in a long time, she felt truly excited about something that didn't involve the government, rebellion, and blood. "You got any good scissors?"  
  
"I could find one."  
  
"Get it. I'll go get a towel."  
  
His bathroom was tidy and spacious enough. It smelled of musk and squeakly clean white-shirts. With much effort, she fought an odd urge to smell the towel hung on the hanger, and turned the tap to fill the tank with warm water.  
  
"Is this good enough?" He wheeled into the bathroom, a pair of stainless steel scissors on his lap.   
  
She tested them against the air. "Excellent."   
  
He was uncomfortable, she could see. She felt his shoulders tense when she put the towel around it, and his neck stiffening when she went through his hair with a small brush, spraying some water and leaving it wet. She gently put her hands on his shoulders. "Relax. I don't bite."  
  
"You don't have to. You have a potential murder weapon in your hands."  
  
That made her grin. She thought his face that was reflected back on the mirror in front of them seemed to grin too. "You know it," she replied, saluting him with the scissors threateningly. "So quit whining and let me do my job."  
  
It felt almost sensual--the texture of his hair, the proximity to his body, how he looked at every single movement of her hand through the mirror, the entire moment. His fine hair was smoothed under her fingertips and she didn't think of anything anymore. She only concentrated on maneuvering the scissors, extra cautious around his ears. She *had* promised not to cut anything, hadn't she?  
  
About ten minutes later she was finished, not giving him a lot of time to squirm. She inspected her work carefully, her hand on his chin, turning his face slowly to examine thoroughly. He looked wary, but didn't seem particularly unsatisfied, which was a good sign.  
  
"It's actually not...bad," he commented, looking at the sides of his head, seemingly not getting use to the different look that a little haircut gave to his own face.   
  
"I'll take that as a 'Thank you' and return a not-so-deserved 'You're welcome'."  
  
He checked himself in the mirror again, and she just watched. He looked different to her, no longer the extremely tortured Logan Cale who needed her help, sometimes in professional capacity, sometimes as a friend. He shook his head slightly and was ready to wheel himself out of the room before her hand stopped him.  
  
"What?"  
  
She nodded at the direction of his face.  
  
"This?" His hand awkwardly felt his jaw. "Uh, I don't think that's such a good idea."  
  
"Logan," her voice was soft with emotions that she hadn't known she had in her. "There is no need to mourn any more."  
  
He hesitated long enough that she came to the conclusion he wouldn't go through with it. Oh well. She shrugged and reached for the wastebasket. She shook the towel over it, letting his cut hair fall into it. When she was cleaning the scissors and contemplating borrowing them for other guys on her team, he opened one of his cabinets and produced a shaving blade. He touched its bluish edge ever so slightly with his index finger; it was sharp enough to make a red line on his fingertip.  
  
He stared at it with an eerie fascination for a long while. So long that a question crossed in her mind in the most unpleasant fashion--had he thought about another use for this blade beside shaving?  
  
No, she told herself immediately. That wasn't Logan she knew. No, Logan wasn't a sad, pathetic excuse for a person who would want to off himself for any reason.   
  
She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all.  
  
After a long silence, she handed him a tissue and watched him press the finger with it, staring as crimson sipped out from the flesh. Then he handed the blade to her, his expression wary. "You see, I should be worried about you using this."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Well then." He wheeled inside again, positioning himself in front of her. "I'm all yours."  
  
It was untimely to make a joke out of that comment, so she said nothing. She put another towel around his neck, tugging into his shirt, almost like a mother getting ready to feed her baby. Having no luxury of shaving cream, she used a soap to create lather in the tap water. Lather bubbled up, and it tingled her hands.  
  
When her fingers touched his cheek, he shivered a slightest bit.  
  
"Sorry. Is my hand cold?"  
  
"No," he answered immediately. His eyes were on somewhere behind her, never on her.  
  
Was he wishing that these hands belonged to 'her'? The hands that could touch him without reservation? Even at this very moment?  
  
Of course he was.  
  
There was no reason for her to feel angry. This emotion was absolutely unfounded, she tried to convince herself. However, it seemed all the convincing did no good, because she said one thing that she shouldn't have as she took a handful of lather and smeared onto his face, "She's pretty."   
  
She felt his jaw slightly tightening against her fingertips. But since he didn't tell her to shut up, she pressed on, "Has an aura about her. Very intense, exotic." And lethal, in several definitions of the word.   
  
"I don't want to talk about it," he said, his whole body stiff.  
  
Well, it took less than ten words about 'her' for him to tell her to zip it. So now she knew.  
  
You don't compete with the dead. You can't. Asha knew that much. But at least the dead can't be the match of a living, breathing friend who would stand by on his side through time and crises. If you wait it out with patience and endurance, there is a chance. If you wait it out, there is a certainty that you will get what you want. Asha had been ready to wait until his wound was healed and ready for a companion. That much, she had been certain.  
  
But now it was no longer possible, was it? This was worse. 'She' was back, just an arm's distance away, only unattainable. 'She' was here, and 'she' and Logan wanted nothing more than to jump into the arms of each other. And if Asha knew Logan Cale at all, she knew he would eventually find a way to go through this obstacle. He was no longer mourning now--and Asha helped.  
  
A big mistake.   
  
Now there was only uncertainty.  
  
Her beeper attached on her jeans suddenly began to vibrate. She put down the blade and checked the message. Good timing, she thought. "The SIW. The team needs me. Sorry, Logan. You'll have to finish this yourself."  
  
"Anything serious?"   
  
"Hope not. You mind if I come to pick up the box again later?"  
  
"Not at all."  
  
She turned away. The warm feeling bubbled inside her just from watching him wipe away the lather covering his face, and she pushed that feeling away, irritated. This was a waste of time. There was no certainty here. She would never know. She risked her life to do what she had to do, and now, did she have to risk her heart being broken? Was he worth all this?  
  
Just before she walked out, Logan called out, "Asha."  
  
She turned around.  
  
"Thanks," he said with the Logan Cale genuineness that she came to recognize. There was that smile of his, meant for her to see. Only for her. "I mean it."  
  
Was this worth it?   
  
Now the answer was obvious.  
  
She smiled, just a bit. "See you around, Logan."  
  
The uncertainty.   
  
That was how she played the game, wasn't it?  
  
  
  
end  
10/04/01  
  



End file.
